Volume 4 Number 2
January 1965

by Grace A. Blossom

With so many of our Indian students entering high school and college today, the teacher of English grammar to bilingual students faces many special problems. While many authorities say that grammar is not helpful in developing better speakers and writers, they do not include the bilingual student, only the native speakers of English. An understanding of the fundamentals of English grammar can be helpful to our Indian students who are struggling to get higher educations.

Let us look at some of these special problems and some ideas that might be helpful to teacher and students.

First, let’s examine the language itself. Until the teacher is aware of the tremendous importance of language to mankind, she or he is not ready to teach grammar. Language is the most important thing in our lives. It differentiates man from animals. Animals may have a language, but it can be about only concrete things and in the present tense. If they do communicate, it can be only on a very low level. When we consider the great developments of the human race--the wheel, fire, the zero, the apposable thumb if you wish to call it a development--we must place language at the top of the list, with quite some space between it and the others.

We are now talking about speech—the ability to make a series of noises that carry an idea from one person to another. That is language and should not be confused with the written aspect because the printed page is only a reflection of the spoken word. Without speech the art of writing could not exist. We become so accustomed to thinking printed material constitutes the language that we tend to overlook the primary importance of the human voice. It is language that holds our entire society together, that gives us our laws, religion, educational institutions, family relationships that continue after the young have grown, our knowledge of the past and its application to the future. Indeed, everything that lifts us above the level of animals can be traced back to the spoken language.

When the English teacher can regard language in its true importance to mankind, then he or she is ready to begin a study of it and to develop the ability to teach its grammar.

Now let’s look at some aspects of this grammar of English. A revised definition of it would be helpful. Instead of saying that grammar describes the language, let us say that grammar of English attempts to describe the language. There is a difference between the two statements because the second puts grammar as secondary to the language—its true place. Now let us explain to the students that every word in English, all 600,000 of them, could be placed in eight boxes, or categories, called the parts of speech. In other words, if we had eight huge boxes on the floor in front of us, we could put every word in the big dictionary in one of these boxes. Each box would be labeled noun, pronoun, adjective, and so on.

But this next point must be taught and retaught, as it is the basis for understanding all further teaching. The words do not always stay in the same box. They shift from box to box or from one part of speech to another, depending on the way they are used in a sentence.

Until the student thoroughly understands that English is a language of word placement, he never will be able to comprehend its grammar. There is all the difference in the world between "The man killed the bear" and "The bear killed the man." Only the place of the words in the sentence determines their meaning. One of my favorite illustrations of this point is the difference between "awful pretty" and "pretty awful." It is this placement of the word in the sentence that determines its "box" or part of speech. For example, in these sentences we have the same word used as three different parts of speech.

Unless the student is aware of this fundamental aspect of the language, English grammar forever will be a mystery to him.

Now let’s look at some of these parts of speech and see what can be done to give a clearer understanding of them. No one has found a way to make our great complex language simple, but if we are going to teach grammar we must start somewhere.

First, let’s look at nouns. The definition, nouns are names, is a good one; but if we will add to it that all nouns in English have singulars and plurals, the definition will be more useful to the student. True, a few words such as sheep and deer use the same form for both singular and plural but these do not present much of a problem. The abstract nouns do. Such words as fear, honor value, truth and many others are easy to recognize as nouns if we check to see if they will take the plural form as they are used in the sentence. If not, we must look for some other part of speech for them.

Second, let’s look at verbs. Our definition says they show action, being or state of being, and many a student has lost test points on sentences such as "John went across the street." To him the action is in the word "across." The teacher needs to add to the standard definition that all verbs have tense and the words in a sentence that can be changed to show a different tense are the verbs. Doing completes the definition and makes it more usable. It will work every time because all verbs in English have tense. In the sentence, "John went across the road," "went" must be the verb as it has tense, "across" does not; therefore it cannot be the verb. This also eliminates the adverbs that often are slipped into our verb phrases, especially "not" which commonly is used to show negation.

We have another box or group of words that show space and time relationship--prepositions. The definition says they show relationship and usually the young learner’s only concept of relationship is kinfolk. My relations were my aunts and uncles, and I was in college before the definition had any meaning for me. A simple demonstration, using a pencil and book, can make prepositions understandable to even the slowest student. Hold the pencil over the book and ask the class, "What is the relation of the pencil to the book?" They may have to be told once or twice but no more. It’s over, of course. Then move it under, beside, behind or into the book and ask again what is the relation of the pencil to the book. Your class will have no trouble answering. Demonstrate a second time, using a student and a chair. He can be over, on, beside, behind, in front of, even under in his space relation to the chair; and in one short lesson that part of speech can be made much clearer to your students.

Let’s look at modifiers. Modifiers, adjectives and adverbs, have a way of falling into place easily if we will train our students to use their ears instead of their eyes. Usually modifiers are placed nearest the words they modify, but not always. Our ears will tell us more quickly than our eyes which word another word modifies if we will say them aloud. Take for example, the sentence, "The leaves are brown." Brown often is a noun and sometimes a verb, but, as it is used here, it will not take a plural or a past tense; so it isn’t a noun or a verb. Is it, then, an adjective or an adverb? Try it orally to see which sounds better. Is it "brown is" or "brown leaves"? Naturally "brown leaves," so it must be an adjective.

In the sentence, "Here comes John," try again to see which sounds better, "John here" or "comes here." "Comes here" sounds better, and we have an adverb. Actually, our ears will tell us quickly what a word modifies and therefore whether it is an adjective or adverb. This little short cut can be useful to your students since their ears will guide them where their eyes may mislead them.

Another useful technique is to teach the parts of speech thoroughly before we even mention the parts of a sentence. We English teachers jump from one to the other easily, but are apt to leave behind a group of confused students. We say, for example, "Mary" is a noun, then proceed to say it is the subject, not bothering to explain carefully that we have jumped from one category to another. A Navajo student once protested, "You just said it was a noun and now you are saying it is a subject. Would you please make up your mind?" If we would make a large wall-sized chart listing the parts of speech and another showing the parts of a sentence, then tell the students to keep them separate in their minds, we would have fewer confused students, bilingual or otherwise.

A final word is in order. No one is going to simplify the grammar of so complex a language as English. But if we as teachers of English can make the beginning steps easy, disregarding the fine points until a later stage, we will have performed a great service to students who are struggling to get educations through English as a second language.